Talk:OmegaWiki – what, why, where, when, who

Thanks Sabine for this detailed explantion. That's very interesting. I am waiting for the UW. Yann 20:59, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I just wanted to add my thanks, too.

James F. (talk) 00:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

What is UW practically, and other questions.

First, thanx Sabine for writing this. Here are my questions:

1. I am in no way a wiktionary user, and I am afraid I still don't understand *how* UW works. I think I understand what UW holds, what tool UW will be and how important it can become, but practically, how will UW present itself (in comparison to existing Wiktionaries for example)? How do people add words, or contribute? Will it be a wiki? How do *I* for example, use it?
2. You talk about a logos.wikitionary.org. Does the potential deal with Logos hold on only this? (ie. giving them a domain?).

Thank you for your answers notafish }<';> 07:57, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

UW is based on the same software we already know: Mediawiki. It is also a relational database for meta information and I would very much like to see a normal edit field as well (for those things that don't have space in the database) - this is something Gerard should answer since he knows the actual database design and he is doing the adaptations to requests (the request of having a "conventional edit field" is a request of mine, but I don't know if this is possible in the first release) and needs.

You will have "fields" where you insert words and relate them. Let's take the "easy" case of inserting a translation. For example you want to add the translation

French: maison

English: house

so you choose the source language "French" and type in maison - then you choose the source language "English" and type in "house" and relate them.

Then maybe you want to add a definition for French - so you choose the French word and add your definition for that word in the definition field. The same is valid for synonyms, antonyms, related words, soundfiles, links to wikipedia etc. etc. etc.

So editing and contributing there will be quite easy - much easier than now on the it., nl., fr. wiktionary since we use all these templates that a newbie has to learn. Templates will not be needed anymore :-)

Since for now there is only the database design we don't really know how the layout of the page is going to be, but this is a secondary thing as a layout is about html (or better php) and can be modified more easily creating also different layouts (skins) like we already have them in wikipedia and the other projects. Of course creating different skins will take some time.

As for logos.wiktionary.org: I don't know if they hold only on this (there should be a meeting with them soon to understand more), but I suppose it to be very important for them to have this attribution if they hand over not only the 7.000.000 words but also a lot of other data for other projects (I cannot quantify this - it is just too much to really understand how much it is) and of course their community containing over 6.000 registered users. I made a research on them and noted that for Rodrigo making things available is indeed very important. As for myself: it is ok to use that name anyway, logos means word - wiktionary means wiki+dictionary - so we would have a unique name that states that logos.wiktionary.org is about "words contained in a wiki creating a dictionary". So it is more than just giving attribution to them (well, that's always my opinion).

Ciao!!! --Sabine 08:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Typically in an application that is built on a relational database, you will get things like selection boxes, where you can choose something like a "Gender" or a "PartOfSpeech" or a "Language" for the translation you want to add.

In the 'house' example, you could indicate that 'maison' is the translation in French. When you do, it will know, that there is this "Expression" in French that is spelled in this manner, from the fact that 'house' is a noun, it can be implied that 'maison' is a noun and it will know that it shares the same Meaning with 'house' as they are translations.

What I am trying to say is, that all kinds of educated guesses are possible when building a user interface. The most important part will be to make it possible to do enter and change data in the first place, much of the "smart" choises will be entered as we learn what is "smart".

Sabine suprised me a bit with this general "edit field". You have to apreciate that the data will be used by many people having many languages as their mother tongue. We will have talk pages, but they will exist at a certain level and they are the same talk page for people from all languages. This is the best place to enter general comments about a word. When there are "relations" there is room for a text field. This was particularly created for "attestations" and this would give you a place to say: "William Shakespeare - Henry III". When this is not sufficient, there may be a need to further develop the database to include this kind of information.

Within structured data you can only enter data as far as the structure allows it. This is why it is of vital importance that people review the database now. GerardM 13:22, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Viewing pages should not be so different; that is a question of interface design using the final database structure -- something which has not been planned in great detail yet, I believe, but which can be arranged to look almost exactly like current pages do (for those who wish this). One of the main advantages of a better-organized system is that you will have a wide assortment of options for how you view exactly which data; you could, rather than seeing all definitions associated with a given 5-letter word, see only one definition, or only the english and russian translations of that definition.

As for remaining unstructured data (not all data about words falls into neatly pre-defined structures) and talk pages (not all users want to have comments in every language on one page), the design of these parts of the system might benefit from feedback and suggestions.

I am not aware of data that does not fit in the data design. When people identify any missing bits and bobs, I would love to hear them. GerardM 06:37, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

As for the domain name: alternative ideas for recognizing Logos's contribution to the effort? +sj | Translate the Quarto |+ 17:34, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

when ?

Hi,

(thanks a lot) I just wanted to have some precision (if available) on the "when ?" question. According to the planning, the UW is supposed to be up on September 1st. As this is next week, maybe some of you know if this date is still reasonable, or if there will be some delay ? --Kipmaster 07:59, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

The time table was not updated I suppose. There will be a first version by mid October as much as I know now - I will ask again to re-confim this. --Sabine 08:18, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

So far and rightly so, the person who has the best information to indicate a schedule is the person to do just that. I am also really interested in seeing an ammended agenda. GerardM 13:26, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

The first bits of code are expected to be out soon; there will be some opportunity for feedback and a revised timeline sometime after that. It might be helpful to readers update the timeline page to indicate that that timeline is old and a revised timeline is forthcoming. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+ 13:31, 26 August 2005 (UTC)